Understanding the 4 steps of knowledge management and how you can implement it in your business. This article will help guide you on each process to improve productivity and reduce turnover.
Knowledge is allowing oneself to gain awareness or familiarity of a fact or situation gained from experience. There are three types of knowledge. Explicit, implicit, and tacit knowledge. These 3 types of knowledge categorize our minds' tactical understanding. Let’s briefly dive into what each means:
Now that you have some familiarity with the 3 types of knowledge, let's look at the processes to form your Knowledge Management system.
The processes of knowledge management can be categorized into 4 categories. Following these steps can help improve efficiencies for using collective knowledge within your organization.
This has to do with the creation of the collection of knowledge. These assets include the knowledge from product inventions, obtaining knowledge from competitors, or business-related knowledge that is obtained from best practices.
Documenting this is crucial. Many times, new insights are shared between colleagues through links or downloads that can get lost in a messaging feed. It’s important your colleagues organize these new industry insights within your knowledge management system. Better to be available for everyone over a select few.
All knowledge your organization acquires should be stored in a knowledge repository. This can be a computer database where results of seeking information are searchable.
One of the major issues is that most organizations don’t have a properly organized repository. This prevents employees from quickly gathering knowledge when they need it. Disorganized storage can result in lost time from productivity. Searching takes time and time costs money.
Knowledge sharing is having a proper way to allow employees to access the information they need to do their job. Your storage is the company’s collective knowledge, therefore employees must have access to use the information.
Think of this as your company’s memory of both implicit and explicit knowledge. Whether it’s a recorded speech from the CEO or a research paper, this information should be accessed flawlessly when needed. Your organization depends on the success of how you share this organizational memory with colleagues.
Using knowledge involves applying the processes of direction and routine. This allows for the performance of tasks and critical decisions. A person who holds the knowledge gives direction. They advise employees on what actions to take in the form of instructions. Routine then sets in by utilizing the knowledge set within the procedures, processes, or product to accomplish what was set out from the direction.
In order to facilitate value creation, Knowledge usage must be applied by these two processes, all while using a knowledge management system.
Organizing both explicit and implicit knowledge does take work, especially if you plan to build your own knowledge management system from scratch.
You're the expert when it comes to your business. The first process must be accomplished in order to even formulate a product you want to sell. The hard part is actually organizing this information for others to use and share with each other. Many large companies today still don’t have well-organized solutions. But that is changing.
Logictry has a customizable solution for knowledge storage, sharing, and usage. This is created through the invention of logic maps. Logic maps areis a decision trees made using a markup syntax where logical conclusions can be predicted by previous statements. This solution drastically speeds up employees' searchability of finding knowledge to support answers fast.
Logictry’s knowledge management system supports a suite of tools. Both customer and employee-facing. These tools are the following:
